Talk of schools in 2003, 2005 and tonight

The talk of the proposed $22 million Breezeway school has set off lots of public fireworks in the past few weeks. Residents are concerned about traffic and safety; city and county officials are at loggerheads about the whole thing.

Tonight, Franklin aldermen take their first vote on approval of rezoning of the land on Clovercroft that the county’s purchased for the school. (Planning commissioners shot down the rezoning for the land, but approved the concept plan. Without the rezoning, a concept plan doesn’t matter.) Anyway, city aldermen are the ones who vote to make binding decisions; the commissions only make recommendations.

Overcrowding in Trinity created the need for a new Breezeway school. With that in mind, I wanted to see what kind of earlier discussion about schools at McKay’s Mill might have occurred. From what I can tell, there wasn’t a lot of talk – and it’s unclear what, exactly, came of it, if anything.

Back in 2003, during a McKay’s Mill discussion, aldermen discussed a condition that 11.75 acres at McKay’s Mill be set aside as the school tract and would revert to the city if the county didn’t use it as a school, records show. Then in February 2005, on another rezoning for McKay’s Mill, former county schools director Rebecca Schwab (later Sharber after she married former Franklin mayor Jerry Sharber) wrote a letter to the Ragan-Smith Associates to confirm that the schools can absorb the students from a new section of 21 single-family lots in Mckay’s Mill. She said that those students would attend Trinity Elementary, Page Middle and Page High Schools.

“As of today, there would be available capacity at all of the schools stated above,” she wrote. “That could also change depending on rezoning or potential new building. We have a fifteen year history of building at least one school every year.”

After saying that the system would continue to request money from the county commission for schools, she wrote: “All we can ever do is accept the students who reside in the county and continue to request funding to build new schools to house them.”

Given how pressed for funding the county is, can the county continue that tactic? More importantly, can they afford to stop?